The next influx, particularly after 1719, was of Ulster Scots, similar to that already mentioned as invading New England. Much of Orange County on the west of the Hudson River was settled by these Ulstermen, beginning as early as 1729, and for the next half-century the infiltration of this Nordic element was continuous, although more of it came through New England than directly into New York harbor. By the time of the Revolution the Ulster Scots had spread over much of the eastern part of northern New York, having enough representatives in Albany in 1760 to establish a Presbyterian church there.
At about the same time Sir William Johnson, who had received a grant of 100,000 acres of land north of the Mohawk River for his valor in defending the colonies against the French at Crown Point and Lake George in 1755, began to look about for suitable tenants and hit upon the idea of importing Scotch Highlanders of Roman Catholic faith. Some hundreds of these arrived just before the Revolution, and like Sir John Johnson, son of Sir William, espoused the cause of the Loyalists. After the Revolution, they moved northward to Ontario where the town of Glengarry recalls their earlier home in Inverness. There, such families as the MacDonnells, McDougalls, Camerons, McIntyres, and Fergusons became an important element of strength to Canada.
As noted, New York State at the time of the Revolution was still distinctly an unimportant colony, and its greatness dates from the invasion of New Englanders immediately after the war. Connecticut, by virtue of its proximity, was the principal source of these settlers, although almost every part of New England contributed. The crossing over of the Ulster Scots has already been mentioned, but it must not be inferred that that was the principal element in the settlement of the State. The main immigration was of the old Puritan English stock which still dominates all of upper New York, except where subsequent colonies of recent immigrants in some of the larger industrial cities have altered the local scene.
The western shores of Lake Champlain and some of the older towns of the Hudson River valley could scarcely be recognized, after a few years, by those who had known them previously. A mere Dutch farm in 1784 had been changed in four years to the thriving city of Hudson, a typical New England commercial town with warehouses, wharves, Yankee shipping, and stores filled with Yankee notions.
A visitor to Whitesborough on the Mohawk River, in 1788, reported that "settlers are continually pouring in from the Connecticut hive." Binghamton was settled jointly by Connecticut and Massachusetts. The same spirit caused a mixing up of the population within the limits of New England so that, to take a single illustration, the men of Middlefield, a small hill town in western Massachusetts, were found on inquiry to come from nearly sixty different towns in Massachusetts and Connecticut.
After the Revolution the more enterprising young men of Massachusetts and Connecticut began to leave their home towns. Of those who departed, a half went to other places in New England, a quarter to western New York, and a quarter to Ohio and other points in the then "Far West."
The extreme western part of New York State had not begun to develop as early as the period of which we are speaking. Canandaigua was the largest town in 1790, and it had but a hundred inhabitants. Pioneers came from New Jersey and Pennsylvania by way of the Susquehanna and Tioga Rivers, went to Seneca Lake, and thence to Cayuga; others from Connecticut had entered the valley of the Mohawk by way of Albany and Fort Schuyler. Small settlements sprang up at Bath, Naples, Geneva, Aurora, Seneca Falls, Palmyra, Richmond, Fort Stanwix, and Marcellus. The Erie Canal was as yet undreamt of.
The population picture of New York State in 1790 is then a double one. The great bulk of the State, so far as area is concerned, was a colony of Anglo-Saxon origin almost identical with the New England States. The Hudson valley formed a less important appendage to this, with New York City at its mouth—a miscellaneous settlement of people of all sorts whose interests were largely commercial.
New York was one of the States that lost most heavily by the Loyalist migration at the end of the Revolution. This superior Nordic element left in two great streams; one by sea to Nova Scotia, and the other overland to Canada. Long Island was a particularly heavy loser, 3000 people going in one fleet in 1783. The influx of Loyalists into Nova Scotia, amounting to some 35,000, was a severe burden on that little colony. Those who went into Canada overland from New York were more easily assimilated, and many of the important settlements along the northern shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, such as Kingston, date from that time. To these Ontario settlers was given, by Order in Council in 1789, the honorary name of "United Empire Loyalists," and they formed the backbone of Upper Canada, as the Province of Ontario was then called, and were a main element in defeating the plans of American strategists in 1812 to capture Canada and annex it to the Union.
Although New York is generally credited with having more Loyalists during the Revolution than any other colony, she also furnished more troops for the patriot army than did any other State except Massachusetts.